The Giver Returns
by poetrygurl
Summary: Yeah, I know the title's kinda corny, but hey. The Giver does return in the middle of the night and has a big convo. w/ Jonas and Gabe. PLEEZE READ AND REVIEW!


  
Jonas pushed himself back from his desk chair and sighed. He'd been working on a Literature assignment for what seemed like hours. Standing up, he stretched his arms up to the ceiling, glancing at the digital clock that sat on his nightstand over his shoulder. 10:54. He'd better get to bed soon.  
  
"Just a quick snack and then I'll hit the sack," he said outloud, glancing around. He might as well have been talking to the wall, for all his basketball trophies cared. Shrugging, he flipped off the light switch and stepped into the dimly lit, carpeted hallway.  
  
Padding softly down the stairs, he thought back to that fateful day he'd stumbled into Eider Village. He'd had Gabe, his younger brother, with him, and they'd come gliding in on, of all things, a bright red sled. It had been around Christmas time, two years ago.  
  
Furrowing his brow, Jonas came to a halt in the darkened hallway as he tried to remember more. They'd ridden down a steep, huge hill. . . it had been a pleasant ride, the snowflakes tumbling around them like a billowing white curtain. . . the sled hadn't been a surprise to Jonas when he reached the top of the hill. . . he'd known it was going to be there. . . but he didn't know how he'd known. . .  
  
That was where Jonas' memories had always stopped. They'd always faded away into a jumbled mass of darkness and confusion and pain. The pain was something he remembered all too well. He recalled the iciness of the biting winds, the sharp cold stings of the snowflakes, the harsh, grating pain when he'd fallen off his bicycle.  
  
His bicycle! Where had that come from? What bicycle? He couldn't remember riding a bike at all!  
  
Jonas eased himself down onto the hardwood floor, thinking hard. A bike, a bike, where was the bike from? If he'd remembered that, what else could he recollect? He thought hard, searching all the recesses of his mind, looking for something, anything, that related to a bicycle. Nothing. He came up with nothing.  
  
Jonas let out an angry whoosh of breath, punching his fist into his open palm. Why couldn't he remember? What was wrong with him? It was like all him memories had been sucked away from him, ripped away from him and thrown into a dangerous vortex.  
  
The tall, lanky fifteen year old got back on his feet, briefly shutting his eyes for a moment. Absolutely blank. His mind was a complete vacuum.  
  
He pushed through the swinging kitchen doors and was routing around in the refrigerator before he noticed the small boy sitting on the counter next to him.  
  
Jonas gave a frightened yelp and stumbled backward, reaching for a kitchen chair to stop his fall. He swallowed roughly, setting the Tupper Ware container on the worn, grainy surface of their table.  
  
"Gabe. What in the world are you doing down here?" he asked, more sharply then he intended to.  
  
The young boy just stared at him seriously, as if studying bacteria under a microscope. He tilted his head to the side. "I knew you'd be down here."  
  
Jonas stared at his younger brother, loving the huge, pale blue eyes, button nose, light freckles, and scruffy blond hair. He reached out and enveloped Gabe in an affectionate, spur-of-the-moment hug. "Gabe, you should be in bed, you know. You've got preschool tomorrow." Jonas immediately knew he'd said the wrong thing. Gabe hated preschool and was constantly complaining about the kids there.  
  
Gabe flinched. "I don't care about preschool."  
  
"Well, you should," Jonas lectured as he retrieved a piece of leftover fried chicken from the fridge. "Even if you're smart enough to be in grade school, you've got to make it through the boring, easy times."  
  
Gabe smiled slightly. "Jony, you sound like Daddy."  
  
Jonas grimaced. "First, I hate the name Jony. You know that. Stop calling my that. Second, I don't want to sound like Dad. At least, not until I'm 40."  
  
Gabe giggled and reached out his hand for a chunk of the cold chicken. Jonas tore off a piece and placed it in his baby brother's hand, wrapping the chubby little fingers around it. He loved his brother more than life itself, and would do anything for him. Gabe had always been there for him. Besides, he was the only family Jonas had. Well, he reconsidered. Mom and Dad were almost family. He'd been with them for a little more than two years.  
  
Glancing up at the clock ticking loudly in the corner of the kitchen, Jonas started to push back his chair. "Well, I guess it's time for us to go to bed. Come on, I'll tuck you in."  
  
The look on Gabe's face stopped him. It had changed back to a serious, philosophical expression, like Gabe was reading Jonas' mind. He quickly shooed the thought away. Tonight had already been scary and frustrating enough, with the memory of the bike flooding back and then receding, like an ocean tide. He'd waited too long to get it, just like he'd done at the beach last year.  
  
Jonas had waited in the warm sand, watching the blue-green water rush up towards him, curling and lapping gently, peaked with white foam. Then, at the very last second, he'd chase after the wave as it receded into the ocean. He could never catch it, no matter how fast his legs had carried him. How he longed to feel the cool water swirl around his ankles! But he had never managed his time just right.  
  
That's what the memories felt like. Some warm and safe, some harsh and bitter. But he could never tell what they were, because whenever bits of them started to float back to him, he'd wait around, basking in the brilliant glow of having a memory, forgetting that by the time he's start chasing it, it would be too far gone for him to catch.  
  
"What is it, Gabe?" Jonas asked shakily, lost in his own thoughts.  
  
"Jonas," Gabe started out, his blue eyes filled with wisdom and intelligence. "What are you mad at yourself about? It isn't your fault the memories don't want to be remembered."  
  
Jonas gulped and sucked in his breath. "Gabe," he whispered under his breath, his eyes locked on his brother's. "How did you know what I was thinking? And how do you know the memories don't want to be remembered?" He felt a sudden chill, though he knew the house's heater was on full-blast.  
  
Gabe shrugged, then broke eye contact. Jonas dropped down into his seat from before. "What do you remember, Gabe-y? Come on, baby, maybe you can think of something I can't." Jonas' voice was pleading.  
  
Silently, his eyes still downcast, Gabe shook his head.  
  
Jonas groaned. "I can't stand the not knowing. I want to know what we were running from. Or who we were running to. Or whether we were sent out as a rescue party who got lost themselves. Or whether we were in an awful accident and we were the only ones who survived. Can't you stand the not knowing?"  
  
Jonas expected his brother to whine. To say something like, "I'm only four, how should I know?" But at the same time, Jonas knew his brother wasn't going to. Gabe was intelligent and wise, he was an incredibly perceptive child.  
  
Instead of answering Jonas' questions, Gabe looked up, straight into Jonas' eyes. "A man's at the front door. But don't be scared of him, Jonas. Go, answer it before he rings the bell. He knows you know he's here. Don't keep him waiting." And with that, Gabe slipped off the counter and stealthily creeped to his room in the back of the house.  
  
Heart pounding, Jonas cautiously tiptoed to the door. He knew his brother was right. In his gut, he had an insane feeling that his brother was 100 percent correct.  
  
And he was.  
  
There, on the front porch, loomed the shadow of a man. He was stooped shouldered and stood very still. Jonas quietly flung the door open and let the stranger into the house.  
  
He quietly led the man to the kitchen, his heart in his throat and butterflies beating wildly in his stomach. As he sat across from the man, Jonas looked directly into his eyes. They were a pale, pale blue, bright and dancing with a choked happiness.  
  
"Who are you?" he mustered bravely. "How did my little brother know you would be here?"  
  
The man smiled widely, then slapped his hand on the table. "Your little brother, eh, Jonas? Why, look at you! You're so tall now, you've let your hair grow shaggier. I would have too, if I had been you, so stifling under all those rules! And look at that tan! You're so much more healthier looking than when I last saw you!"  
The man slapped the table again and let out a chuckle, as if he couldn't even hold in his happiness. Indeed, it seemed to be bursting out of the seems.  
  
Jonas didn't care about any of that, though. He was getting more and more confused by the second. "My hair? My tan? How do you know my name? Who are you? What are you doing here?"  
  
Gabe chose this moment to walk into the kitchen. He'd gone and gotten the pewter figure of a hippopotamus from his room. Not even giving Jonas a second look, he walked over to the man, set the figurine down in front of him, and climbed into his lap.  
  
Jonas gritted his teeth. Gabe was his brother. He didn't even know this stranger. Why was he sitting in his lap?  
  
"I want you to explain everything to me right now, Mister. I'm sorry, but I'm at the end of my rope."  
  
"Don't you remember, Jonas? No apologies!" Gabe and the stranger roared with laughter.  
  
"Look. You are being too loud, and I will have to ask you to leave my house if you do not start talking in the next five seconds. One. . . two. . ."  
  
"Okay, okay! Hold your horses! Cool your jets! I'll start talking," the stranger held up his hands in mock surrender. Then his face became grave. Jonas liked it better this way, when this odd man was more serious and acted more like a grown-up was supposed to act.  
  
"I know you have no idea who I am, Jonas. But your brother does. The only reason he knows who I am is because he has a highly attuned sense of Tracking. Instead of Seeing Beyond with Music and Color, your brother was blessed with a gift of Tracking, which means-"  
  
"Whoa, whoa. What are you talking about? First, who are you?" Jonas asked, more confused than ever.  
  
"I was the most honored person in the town you came from. My job was the Receiver.  
  
"The Community you lived in was involved in a government project called Sameness, many centuries ago. They converted to a different way of life than the rest of the world. A lot of other towns and cities did it also, but it soon proved that it didn't work right. The government was too far involved in the project, however, and couldn't redo anything they'd done. So many communities and villages stayed in Sameness. The world quickly forgot about them, because they didn't need any help from the outside world. They were very self-sufficient. Everything was very orderly and strict. When a person became an adult at the age of Twelve, they were inducted into the Community with a very special Ceremony. They each received as Assignment, or job, which they would carry out the rest of their life, until they retired to the House of Old.  
  
"It all sounds wonderful, but there was very many problems that people didn't know about. First off, since everyone was the same and everything had to be perfect, perfect, perfect, the Committee of Elders selected one person to be the next Receiver. I was chosen to be that person in my generation, and I was to carry all the memories of outside life. All the pleasures, all the pain. It was the worst job in the entire Community, yet the most highly honored and respected.  
  
"In your generation, Jonas, you were chosen as the Receiver. Which means I became the Giver. I was to give you all the memories, passing them to you very carefully and thoroughly. When I passed away, you were to help the Committee of Elders chose the next Receiver. But that wasn't your only job. You were also required to instruct the Committee of Elders on any decision they might have to make.  
  
"The way you were chosen was simple. You had to fit the requirements of the Chief Elder (she was the head of the Committee of Elders), but you also had to fit my requirements. Every Receiver had a special ability to See Beyond. Because our Community was so orderly, we had nothing that could disrupt our daily lives. That included color, music, different styles of dress, I.Q.'s, all sorts of things. I was gifted in Seeing Beyond because I could hear music. You, Jonas, could see color. And little Gabe here, if everything had stayed the same, would have also been the next Receiver. He has the ability to Track. When we were in the Community, that meant he could contact the outside world just by using his mind. He could close his eyes and see a press conference, a television set airing a football game, a teenager typing a report on a computer. That's what kept him up all the time at night.  
  
"One day, you saw something that really angered you. It made you want to change to world, or at least your part of it. And you did. We planned something, but it didn't go according to plan, and you had to sneak out of the Community early. As you got farther and farther away, the memories you'd carried with you were taken from you slowly and released into the Community. Because you had been training for so long, it was very chaotic.  
  
"I've come to tell you that the Community is no longer the Community. It is now Straightway City. They're still very, very strict and orderly, but have started to change. The Chief Elder passed away about six months ago, and I took her place. I've contacted the outside world, and we're changing back to what we used to be, back and back-"  
  
"And back," Jonas finished for him numbly. He remembered. He remembered! He suddenly remembered everything, everything about anything that had happened during his life!  
  
Jonas sighed and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. It was just to much information to comprehend. His life was so different from what he'd imagined it to be. Suddenly, his eyes flew open.  
  
"How does Gabe know you? How did he know you were at the door?" Jonas asked.  
  
The man, who'd seemed so loony before, shrugged. "It's one of the characteristics to tracking, I guess." He stood up from his chair. "Now, I think you two should be going to bed."  
  
Gabe looked up at him with wide eyes. "Will you come back to visit?"  
  
Jonas nodded eagerly. "Yes, please. I'm so sorry for the way I acted before. You're welcome back anytime. There's so much I want to know."  
  
The stranger's blue eyes twinkled merrily. "I'll be back, Jonas. Don't worry about that. Now, I think I'll put you two to bed and then be off on my way."  
  
He led the boys upstairs, and Jonas pointed out each bedroom. The man went into Gabe's for about a half an hour. Jonas was waiting on his bed when the man pushed open his door.  
  
"Good night," Jonas said, throwing the blanket over himself. "Please lock the door on your way out."  
  
The old man squatted down beside the bed. "Let me help you get to sleep," he whispered. Jonas could barely tell what he'd was saying, he was so tired. He closed his eyes, and the old man placed his fingertips lightly on Jonas' back.  
  
"Good night, my son," he whispered, but Jonas wasn't sure if he'd imagined it or not.  
  
  
  
The next morning, Jonas woke up refreshed and energetic, despite his late night. As he bounded down the stairs, he shouted to his mom, who was standing in the kitchen, making a pot of coffee, "Mom, you will never believe what a wonderful dream I had! I dreamed that I was walking along a river with a girl. She had beautiful red hair, as shiny and bright as an apple's. I think her name was Fiona. . ."  



End file.
